Three marks, one mate

Six

Desiree's POV.

I put one leg in front of the other as I walked out of the trial room. If anybody was trying to get on my nerves then they had to work even twice as hard to do that.

Flanked by the men who made life a hundred percent easy for me, I decided not to waste more time. I spoke to Us, and proceeded to the places where I never thought I would be.

Zachary was the first to break the silence. "How are you feeling?"

He wasn't just asking this because he wanted to know, he was asking this because he looked like he couldn't bear it to stay away from me, and I appreciated that, but I still wanted to maintain some decorum so that the rest of the people did not feel cheated.

I had so many things on my mind and none of them was able to give me the satisfaction that I deserved.

Brandon was waiting for me to speak and I could see that he was hanging onto every word. The only issue right now was the fact that I wanted to be able to clear my head without any influence.

I was also looking forward to making sure that I didn't complicate my life even more than it already was. If there was going to be opposition then I had to be prepared.

"I need to undergo training. If I'm going to be fighting for the position."

"You don't have to fight. The moon goddess has already chosen you for us." Brandon cuts me off.

I wasn't expecting anything else from him other than him telling me not to bother about it. He could always switch things around in his favor but I didn't think it was going to give him the respect that I deserved.

"You cannot force people to obey you. They have to be willing to do it." I reminded him.

I didn't like the fact that I was going to be subject to scrutiny by people who did not deserve my presence, but it also didn't take away the fact that they were right to an extent to make demands.

"If you don't want to fight, you just have to say the words, and then we would stop them," Jackson told me.

I had come to understand him on another scale and it was the fact that he hated any form of oppression and was going to stand regardless of the situation to make sure that he cleared it all out.

"As great as you think it sounds, I think that it's only going to put me in the bad books of others, and I really do not want to be a part of that." I quietly brushed off their suggestions.

Zachary's worry hummed through the bond. I was a bit distracted by what this could mean, but I refuse to allow myself to be trampled upon by the fear of the unknown.

The moment anybody had an idea that I was scared about this they were going to capitalize on it.

"This is according to the customs and I don't think that it would be great for us to break it. We can find a way around it but completely tearing it apart is not even an option." I stood my ground.

For a long time now I have been thinking about what I wanted to do and I had received nothing close to clarity but for reasons that I could not explain I had also come to find out that the best way for me to handle this was to pretend like it never existed and just deal with it without thinking about the consequences.

"I'm not going to allow myself get drowned in a sea that cannot be explained. Neither am I going to allow myself be drowned by the fear of what others are going to think about me. I have already made it clear that I would not be repeating myself."

I could still feel the partial hostility between the three men. No matter how much they wanted to hide, they didn't feel comfortable, and I wanted to bridge that gap.

"Why don't we go hunt?" Brandon suggested.

I didn't know how to feel about his suggestion because he was a leader of a pack, and everyone was basically hanging onto every word that he spoke, waiting for him to give them the next directive.

Jackson mumbled something under his breath. "Did you say something?" Brandon asked purposely just to make sure that he heard well.

"Did you hear anything should be the question?" Jackson fired back.

Okay, hold up, everyone. I didn't think that both of them were still going to be at each other's throats, given the circumstances, but I guess I must have misinterpreted the entire thing and thought that the world was within my reach.

"This is not the time or place for us to have arguments about who is more deserving of her. In my opinion, we should look for ways to counter the external energy instead of expounding on unreasonable things." Zachary, ever the present voice of reason, spoke.

I was proud of having him by my side, and I guess the rest of the people could feel it.

Brandon growled.

We had not spoken about the usage of power, and its tussle. The three of them were powerful in their rights, but everyone wanted to claim ownership of me, and that was something that I was not going to tolerate, whether now or later.

"I'm not an object that can just be pushed around. If you want to communicate your feelings with me then you have to do it respectfully and not according to the way people have always done it. I will not be pushed around to suit any negative narrative." I walked out on both of them.

My wolf was hailing me in my head making me smile. Just a few days ago, I would never have thought that I would have the audacity to speak to Alpha Brandon in that way, but if he wanted to be with me, I needed to set some ground rules, and they were not to be compromised.

*****

Sitting at the veranda didn't give me the clarity that I needed. If these people were waiting for me to fail then I needed to prove them as wrong as possible. I didn't need to make it obvious that I couldn't do without the men that occupied my heart all of a sudden.

If I didn't know better, I would have thought that I was in love with any of them for a long time, but it wasn't so.

There was a slight knock at the door bringing me out of my deep thoughts and plunging me into something else that I would never have considered.

"It's me, Maya. I'm bringing in your food." She explained sensing my hesitation.

I will be a fool to trust anybody who just came my way, given the fact that I was once in made and I knew that most people around here did not like me for whatever reasons best known to them.

I also decided that if I was going to be playing this game, I needed to be on top of the situation, which meant I needed to have eyes and ears that would supply me with perfect information about what was going on.

"Come in Maya."

She walked in with a tray containing a steaming mug of coffee, and some blueberries. "The Cook is handling things in the kitchen, but Alpha Brandon asked that I give this to you." Her head remained lower to the ground as she explained her presence.

Going from being an ordinary person to being royalty and being served by the people who looked down on me a long time ago was a different ball game.

There was one person who had not come to visit, and I understood that she was probably also bonding with her mate, so I couldn't hold it against her that she had not reached out yet. In the meantime, I would still love to hear her opinion on a lot of things.

"You can drop it."

Maya obeyed dutifully.

I sensed a bit of hesitation in her steps as she headed towards the door.

"Maya, tell me what is going on," I demanded.

I wasn't expecting her to go full-on into a cataclysmic explanation of what was going on, but I deserved some accolades for my patience, and that was something that I was not going to negotiate on.

"People have been speaking about your presence and what it poses." She whispered.

I held my breath as I asked the next question. "Do you think that you are right?"

Without a bit of resistance, she nodded.

My heart sank. I had even more to prove to this people that I was worthy, and that I was going to do. I vowed.